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Author: rdennies

I haven’t blogged in a while, but a crazy week has made me want to share a message with you. I have been feeling like I’m in the world alone for the past few days. My friends have been there, my family has been there, I interact with people at work, but I’m yet feeling like I’m in a bubble and not connected to anyone. This is because I have lost the connection that I once had with myself. I am a nurturer by nature. If you are sick, I want to give you medicine. If you are sad, I want to make you laugh. If you are hungry, I want to feed you. However, in the midst of nurturing and loving, I lost ROSHAWNDA. Am I sad? No. But what I am is a stranger to myself. I think the reason is because I spend so much time trying to balance the normal woes of my own life as well as the woes of those around me that I have become a casualty. As women, we want to fix everything. We want to be the best mom, aunt, wife, girlfriend, sister, friend, etc. and we tend to fall short because we have not taken the time to remember that you were you before you were anything else. You came first so you come first. People notice your change when your physical appearance changes. How many times have you heard a person say “ooooh she let herself go?” But me? I look the same, yet I have let myself go. My emotional appearance isn’t the same. Am I depressed? NO But, I am just simply not connected to ROSHAWNDA in the way that I should be. I’m telling you this because I want you to continue to be as awesome as you are, but include yourself on your priority list. Including you and taking care of you will help you to better take care of all the people that need you. You can’t give anyone else 100% until you give yourself 1, 000. This is a daily struggle for me. So I am making a promise to myself to strengthen my emotional appearance so that I can be a better friend, sister, niece, granddaughter, teacher, and more importantly child of GOD. It is so easy to get caught up into everyone else that you forget to care about you. I’m not saying be selfish; just try to remember that you matter too. And nobody else on Earth can cater to your needs the way that you can. I have decided to make a plan to devote time each week to myself in isolation. ISOLATION: meaning unplugged from social media, not texting in group texts, and just alone with me and my thought mediating on what is and not what I want it to be. I will spend this time thinking about how to be a better RO. See, the scary thing is that if I continue to be invisible to myself, I will always be invisible to others. I can’t have that and neither can you. Don’t neglect you. Sometimes the only person hindering you from happiness is you. Claim your happy back. Take back your peace. Rejoice in rejection. Know that you can’t do it all and you were not put here to. Cry if you need to just don’t fall apart. You are not a robot. You get to be not okay. You have the right to want more. You need sleep. You need food. You need peace of mind. You deserve the luxury of pampering yourself mentally and physically. Most importantly, you deserve YOU! It is okay to say no. It is okay to not have time. It is okay to want to be better. Bottom line: if you don’t take the time to know the person you see in the mirror, then you are worthless to others. I challenge you to find a day that is just for you. Give no thought to issues that have nothing to do with you. After all our souls weren’t saved by a woman, they were saved by a baby of the male gender and clearly you and I don’t fit that mold. We can’t save people no matter how hard we want to try. This (whatever it is) is not your fight. Chin up and know that it’s okay and that you are AMAZING.

I never really blog about my friends, but this time will be a little different. This time last year, I had a friend to get married. I sat back and watch how my friend’s husband interacted with her. Before he got himself a drink, he made sure she was not thirsty. If she looked anxious, he would subtly and tactfully grab her by the small of her back and just comfort her without saying a word. When she said quirky things, he laughed along with her rather than at her. Now, I know this friend well, so I know she can be a handful. However, he never seemed to be bothered by it; he never acted like she was getting on his nerves. The entire time I was in their presence, I thought to myself “I want a man who puts me first just like he puts her first.”

It wasn’t until more thought and observation of their interactions that I realized he does not put her first. SHE IS NOT FIRST ON HIS LIST AT ALL!!!

He is able to love her that way and comfort her that way because he puts God first. He could not love her that genuinely and passionately if he did not know God. He is a loving husband because he it’s clear that he knows God has to be at the forefront.

I have always thought about what I wanted my husband to be like. I always said I want to be the most important thing in his life. I always said that I wanted a man who would drop everything for me.

I’m so glad that I have learned to amend that prayer. I am so glad that I now pray for a man who will love me the way God requests him to do. I pray for a man who will have God at the head our lives.

I thank God that he didn’t send me my husband when I was praying for that may who would ineffectively be infatuated with me.

So no, I don’t want to be put first. I’ll fall in line behind the BIG GUY as long as you promise to get up in the middle of the night with me to go get fountain drinks. LOL

Everyone who knows me knows that I am very adept in English-Language Arts. I’ll be the first to admit that Math is not now nor has it ever been my strong subject. However, I want to talk about money. Everyone loves money. I need you to leave this blog understanding that anybody who is not adding to your peace is taking away from it. THEY ARE ROBBING YOU! I want to talk about the way that emotional connections take a toll on us. We tend to sacrifice our peace for the people and things we are emotionally connected to.
Imagine that your peace of mind is stored in a bank account. Every moment you are at peace you get money added to your account. Every moment you are not at peace you lose money. If this was the case, how many of you would have money in the bank???

I’ll be the first to say that I would be poor, downright impoverished. I have a habit of letting other people be in control of my peace. Family members, coworkers, friends, significant others, and even situations have been known to take away my peace. The sad part is that these people often times don’t have a clue that they are causing me to sacrifice my peace because I tolerate it. I allow them to take away my peace.

I recently had a friend to share her dreams with me. When I asked her what she was waiting on, she gave me three excuses. First, her child’s father would not support. Second, her dad would be upset. Third, it might cause a strain in her relationship. I kept thinking but what do any of things have to do with you? She was not peaceful in her current state, but would not go after her peace because of what other people might feel. So what she did was add to their peace and stole from her own. It’s sad to say, but many of us operate this way. It is just not fair.

It’s simple Math, if a person is not adding to your peace, then they are subtracting from it. How much do you have to give? Are you going to just keep letting people and situations rob you of your peace? It belongs to you. It’s okay to get rid of anything and anybody who stops you from being at peace. Why is it that you always have to make the sacrifices? Why is it you that always has to compromise. You deserve peace. It’s your God given right, but it will not come with out a price.

How long will you allow people to rob your bank of peace? Will it ever come to a point where you unapologetically make decisions that will secure your peace?

So, I recently posted my opinion on what I thought cheating did to women. Since then, I have thought more about it, and I came to the conclusion that there was a much more long lasting affect that I did not include in my initial post. I would be doing myself as well as other women an injustice to not address this. I would have to say that the main effect that being cheated on has on a woman is that it NEGATIVELY AFFECTS HER FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS AND EFFORTS AT RELATIONSHIPS. See when a woman is cheated on, she throws all men in the category with man who cheated on her. She is defensive and guarded. She cannot properly give love or receive it because her trust is shot. She does not believe that this time will be any different and that is the way she treats any man that approaches her. When something good comes her way, she questions it or sabotages it because she subconsciously believes that it is indeed too good to be true. For example, if a guy comes in and does all the things that the woman was not getting in the previous relationship, she is prone to think he is fake or just putting on. In a new relationship, a woman who has been hurt is just sitting around waiting on this guy’s true colors to appear.

The issue with this is that not all men are the same, and just because you had a bad experience with a guy, you cannot allow that experience to determine how you view and treat every other man that comes in your life. Not everybody is out to use and abuse you. There are some good men left, but you will never find him if you are still living in the dust of what happened to you.

Now, I am not saying that you should not be careful and pay attention to early signs, but you cannot allow what happened to you to determine what will happen to you. Treating a new man according to how an unfaithful ex treated you is allowing the very person who hurt you to control your life. If he is a factor in your decision making when dating, then he is still winning. HE IS STILL RULING YOUR LIFE EVEN IN HIS ABSENCE. Don’t give him that power. Does he deserve it? Moreover, what you are really doing is running a potentially good guy away. You will never be happy if you just refuse to let go of what happened to you. Again, not all men are the same.

If you find yourself getting the same types of men, then that says something about your taste in men rather than the character of all men.

Ok, so you had a bad relationship. It happens. Bounce back! Get over it. Dust yourself off, and try to love again. You are capable of giving and receiving real love. It can happen. Don’t give up on it or ruin it because you were hurt.

Recently a friend asked me what I thought cheating did to a woman! Hmph it’s a pretty touchy subject, and I was hesitant to write about it because I didn’t want anybody who cheats or has cheated to feel that I was throwing a rock at them. Moreover, I didn’t want my ex to feel that he was the muse for this blog, but you know what? If it hadn’t happened to me, then I wouldn’t be able to write about it. So here goes nothing. The question is
“How does cheating really affect women?”

My answer is simple: it ruins her. Even if for just a moment, being cheated on ruins a woman. Yes, she can bounce back and be herself again, but damage is indeed done. Let me share a few facts with you. Most women will agree; those who don’t either haven’t been cheated on or aren’t being honest

1. Cheating is much more than sex. Who really cares that you had sex with someone else? If it was just about the sex, then trust me we’d get over it much faster. Cheating is about the thought you put behind deceiving your spouse. It’s about the time and energy you stole. It’s about what went lacking at home while you were out doing who knows what with who knows whom. Cheating is the multiple times you lied without thinking about it. It’s about the way you left your spouse open and unprotected to be the butt of jokes and ridicule. See, the worst part of cheating does not happen in the bedroom. It happens long before you made it there.
2. Cheating causes a woman to question her worth. Regardless of how hard we try, we begin to wonder why we were not fulfilling enough or what we could have done differently. We lose a sense of self all because our spouse chose to cheat.
3. Cheating takes away a woman’s security. It makes her feel like she always have to be on the defense. We subconsciously feel that the world is against us.
4. Cheating makes a woman question her intelligence, especially when we stay. We wonder how we could be dumb enough to tolerate such treatment. However, when we leave we feel like a failure.
5. Lastly, cheating causes a woman to hate other women. Although, the woman owes us no loyalty, we find ourselves being bitter toward the woman. I mean let’s face it, we downright tend to despise the women.

I already know a lot of women will say these things didn’t happen to them and somehow they miraculously bounce back. Ha! Stop it. Show me a woman who wasn’t ruined by cheating and I’ll show you a woman who was cheating too.

Life is about choices. You are free to make the choices that you want to make in life. You are free to choose left or right. You are free to choose to lie or tell the truth. You are free to date who you please. You are free to inflict pain or pleasure. You are totally free in your decision making. However, decision making is one of the most expensive freedoms that you have. Making decisions is indeed a gamble, because although you are free to make choices, you are not free to choose the consequences associated with those choices. You can choose to be disloyal to a person, but you cannot choose how that person will respond to your disloyalty. You can even choose to have a child, but you cannot choose what that child will look like, act like, or be like. When it comes to consequences you are totally POWERLESS and all your efforts to shape consequences are futile. I said all of that to say this: you have to be careful about the bed that you are making, especially if it is one you are not sure you will be comfortable laying in. You cannot keep making decisions and then running from the consequences of those decisions. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and say “hey I caused this, so let me deal with it.” Life does not afford you any rewinds or do over’s, so sometimes you have to focus on getting it right the first time. If you attempt to make good heartfelt decisions, then you are less likely to be running, sad, and afraid when it is time to pay the piper.

Many people feel that it is a great insult and offense for someone to cause them to waste their money. I have even heard people say, “The worst thing you can do to me is waste my money!” I disagree. The ultimate betrayal that can be done to a person is wasting their time. Wasted time, in my opinion, is one of the biggest losses you can suffer.

If someone wastes my money, then I can work harder and earn EVERY CENT back. No real damage has been done. However, if someone wastes my time, there is no task I can do, no second job I can take up, no side hustle I can perform to get my wasted time back. Once my time is wasted, it is lost forever. The damage done there is beyond repair.

I charge you to be careful with your time. Don’t allow people to waste it, and more importantly don’t you waste it. You will never get it back. What you don’t want to do is find yourself looking back and thinking what you could have been doing, would have been doing, or should have been doing had you not been wasting your time. Think about it.

Most of my life I had one defense mechanism: seeing things the way I wanted them to be rather than seeing them the way they were. I got by because I ignored what was and delighted in making things what I thought they should be. At best, I can say I spent a lot of my time pretending. Now, I knew the reality of things, but it was so much easier to deal with my sugar coated version of affairs. I’ll give you an example!!!! If someone was mean to me, I tuned it out, and I focused only on moments when they were more pleasant. Most of my friends would be like, “I don’t see how you do it?” I knew exactly what they would be referring to, but I’d still focus on the way I wanted things to be. Now that’s good in its place. However, there is a time when facing reality is important. Ignoring the problem just won’t make it go away. Seeing only the bright side won’t cast away the dark times. Sometimes you have to man up, take those blinders off, and face things just like they are.

I will keep this simple. This is something that I am still learning. In this blog, much like all the others, I am trying to speak to you while also speaking to myself. By nature, I am a FIXER. When things are broken, I try to fix them. I want to “Olivia Pope” my life as well as the lives of those around me. I love to help people FIX things that are wrong with their lives. When I feel like I have successfully fixed something, I feel this inner peace that is indescribable. Oh but when I fail at fixing what I want fixed, I feel defeated and I feel like a failure. AND I HATE TO FAIL.
Recently, like always, I have been trying to fix something, and every effort at fixing it seems to make it worse, and the worst it gets, the worse I feel. Well today, I got to thinking that not everything needs to be fixed. Some things are just better off broken!!!
I know it is easier said than done, but sometimes you should just face the fact that whatever shattered should remain shattered and keep moving. This goes for relationships, friendships, jobs, and other involvements. You are just not equipped to fix everything, and let’s be real, sometimes the MASTER FIXER is the one who broke whatever it is you are trying to fix. You cannot “out fix” the original fixer. STOP TRYING TO FIX EVERYTHING: IT WILL ONLY HURT YOU MORE.

Most broken things are like glass. Sometimes it is better to leave them broken instead of hurting yourself trying to put it back together.

Very few women, if any, will admit that they are always looking for ways to improve themselves. We will spend hundreds for the latest tone correcting makeup, hundreds for the latest bundles of non-shedding/non tangling foreign hair, hundreds for the latest fashions (handbags and designer shoes). For most women, life is merely about being the best version of themselves that they can be. Enough is never enough. We want to look good, feel good, smell good, and most importantly be good.

The sad truth here though is that there is not a shoe on the market that can truly make you feel good. There is not a lipstick sold that can truly make you be the best you that you can be. Shoes, and we know how much a woman loves a good pair of shoes, can honestly and sincerely fill those gaping holes that we feel when the makeup comes off. See the real truth is that feeling good is a matter of the heart. If you are not emotionally and spiritually feeling good then the outer appearance is just an expensive façade that can never make you feel complete.

To really feel complete, to really feel whole you have to be your own best friend. You have to be your own lover because the truth you really don’t love anyone else if you don’t love you. You are not anyone’s friend if you are not your own friend. When you are completely and utterly in love with yourself, then the harsh blows of the world won’t be as painful.

I know from experience that the best kind of love is self-love. Self-love helps you to be able to comfort yourself when things didn’t go as planned. When you are disappointed you can dust yourself off and fearlessly try again when you really love yourself because there is no fear in love. You can forgive and not hold grudges when you love yourself. You can smile for no reason, dance randomly in the grocery store, shamelessly listen to trap music and not feel judged because when you love yourself, nobody’s opinion of you even matters. (Yes I dance in the grocery store. I mean full fledge twerking!)

Life happens, and you will fail, you will be heartbroken, someone will hurt you, you will cry, you will fall; however, you can bounce back so hard when you choose to love you. Your enemies will even have to say “she’s not my favorite person, but she’s happy.” This happiness will show whether you have on $500 shoes or $5 shoes. This happiness will show whether you are single or have a man who adores you. The most important part of intrinsic happiness is that NOBODY CAN TAKE IT FROM YOU!

I urge you to choose you. Remove things from your life that hurt. Forgive those people who hurt you; try to understand their plight. Be happy. Smile. Love. If feels so good. The best thing a woman can do for herself is choose to love herself. Undeniably, the second best thing is to buy a nice pair of shoes. You may as well look good while loving you.